


Babysitter

by ShayneyL



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Episode: s06e16 Collective, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20290003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayneyL/pseuds/ShayneyL
Summary: The burning question of season 6: what happened to the Borg baby?





	Babysitter

**Author's Note:**

> Writer's Month 2019, Day 17. The prompt is "accidental baby acquisition."

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ: *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

It was a sound that drew Harry to consciousness. At first he thought he must be dreaming. He was in sickbay. How had he gotten here? And there couldn't be a baby in sickbay, could there?

He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking around. There was indeed a baby, lying in a standard Starfleet bassinet, crying fitfully. There didn't seem to be anyone else around. Harry got up and staggered over to the bassinet. 

It was a Borg baby. It had metal implants on its tiny body. Harry shuddered. Memory was returning. The Borg cube, eerily empty except for children...who tried to assimilate him. He touched his face, feeling for implants, but felt only human skin. His hands and arms looked normal. The Doctor must have fixed it.

It might be a Borg baby, but it was still a baby. It didn't appear to be hooked up to life support or anything. Carefully, he picked it up. It stopped crying immediately. Harry returned to his biobed and sat down on it, not quite trusting his legs, cradling the baby in his arms. It had been a long time since he'd held a baby. Not since Naomi. He remembered bringing her over from the other _Voyager_, when she was a newborn, just about the size of this baby.

He gently touched the baby's cheek, and it turned and began sucking on his finger. Was it hungry? Or was it reliant on regeneration for nourishment, as Seven had been at first? 

"Harry."

Harry looked up, to find Tom standing there, watching him with a surprisingly sweet smile. It wasn't the usual Paris smirk. "What?" Harry asked.

"You're not supposed to get up yet," Tom said. He picked up a scanner and came over, running it over Harry. 

"I'm not up," Harry pointed out, with a grin. "I'm sitting down, on my bed."

"But you were, unless you've suddenly developed psychokinetic powers."

"It was crying," Harry said. 

"Sorry about that. I was helping the Doc in the lab. We heard her crying, but then she stopped and we figured she'd gone back to sleep."

She had gone back to sleep. Apparently, she wasn't hungry.

"Harry, lie down. You can keep holding the baby if you want. She likes to be held." Tom touched a control, and a small platform slid out of the edge of the biobed. Railings rose out of it along three sides, creating a little crib. Tom took the baby from Harry's arms and laid her the crib, then pushed Harry to lie down. 

Harry turned on his side to watch the baby sleeping beside him. "So, what happened? Are you all right?" He spoke softly, so as not to disturb the baby. He remembered waking up in a Jefferies Tube and finding the _Delta Flyer_ deserted. He'd been afraid Tom and the others had been assimilated.

"I'm fine. So is everyone else. You're the one in sickbay." Tom finished his scans. "The Doc wants you to stay here for a couple of days."

"Why?" Harry asked. He was a little unsteady, but didn't feel that bad. He hated being stuck in sickbay.

"Let's see," Tom said, leaning down to look at the readouts with a dramatic flourish. "You have a concussion, probably from hitting the bulkhead when the plasma conduit exploded. The Doc healed the plasma burns, but there's some residual nerve damage that will need periodic therapy over the next two days. You almost died when a bunch of Borg children tried to assimilate you and botched it. The Doctor has removed most of the nanoprobes, but you need more treatments to round up the strays. There's organ involvement because—"

"Okay, okay," Harry said. "I just hate lying here doing nothing."

"Then you're in luck," Tom said. "I have a job for you. Take care of the baby."

Harry looked at the sleeping infant. She was awfully cute, but... "I don't know anything about babies. Let alone alien Borg babies."

"There's nothing to it," Tom said. "This is the perfect baby. You don't have to feed her or change her diapers. At least not yet. She's still dependent on nanoprobes to provide nutrition."

Tom did have some experience with children, Harry remembered. His sisters had provided him with nieces and nephews. "Then why does she need someone to take care of her?" 

"Because she's a baby, Harry. She needs someone to hold her and talk to her and play with her. And the Doctor is terrible at it. He's a hologram. He's got no body warmth. And no heartbeat."

Harry considered that. "I could program him to have body warmth and a heartbeat."

Tom looked amused. "You would think of that. Go ahead, give it a shot. Or you could just cuddle her yourself. You were doing a pretty good job of it when I came in."

The Doctor's voice came from the lab. "Mr. Paris, have you found those reagents yet?"

"Hark, I hear a holler," Tom said. "I'll be back to check on you later. Don't get out of bed."

* * *

Harry had fallen asleep when a commotion awoke him — and the baby. He took her into his arms to soothe her. "Shhhh, it's okay." He held her and watched, bemused, as a horde of children ran around sickbay.

It wasn't really a horde, he realized. It was only four...five, counting Naomi — and Seven of Nine. It just seemed like a lot. 

A little girl came over to stand by his bed, staring at him and the baby with open curiosity. He recognized her. She was wearing normal clothes now, not Borg armor plating, and she had only a few implants left, but he recognized her.

"Are you going to assimilate me again?" he asked. 

"I didn't assimilate you," she replied. "I only stunned you. First assimilated you." She hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry. We shouldn't have done that." 

"It's all right," Harry said. "You should have seen what Seven did to me when we first separated her from the Collective." 

"My designation is Mezoti," the girl said. 

"I'm Harry. Do you know what this baby's name is?"

"No, but Seven probably does. She accessed all our former designations." 

"Thanks, I'll ask her."

"Mezoti, your turn," the Doctor called. He was apparently giving the children medical checkups. She turned and scampered toward him.

"I apologize," Seven said. She took Mezoti's place by his bed. "I told them not to bother you, but they are disorderly and disobedient."

Harry smiled. "That is the nature of children, Seven." She looked a bit...frazzled. Which was most unusual for the former Borg.

"The captain directed me to oversee them. It is...difficult."

"Mezoti said you looked up the history of the children. Did you find out what this baby's name is?"

"Her designation was Janry."

"Just Janry?"

"Species 1221 assigns just one designation at birth. Further designations are 'earned' as the individual matures and reaches certain achievements."

"I see. What happened to her parents?"

"I did not determine that, and do not currently have the time to do further research. If you want to search for the information yourself, the database from the Borg vessel is accessible to crew members with your security clearance." She turned suddenly and headed across sickbay. "Azan! Rebi! Cease that activity!" 

Well, that was something Harry could do. "I'll be right back, little Janry," he said, then put her down. He looked around to make sure Tom wasn't nearby to scold him for getting up, then went to the office where he grabbed the computer off the desk. No one even noticed him in the chaos.

* * *

Harry sat on a biobed, holding Janry and giving her a bottle. The Doctor was weaning her off nanoprobes, which meant feeding her and changing her diaper from time to time. Harry had been released from sickbay days ago, but still came down to see how Janry was doing. He'd created a subroutine for the Doctor that mimicked body warmth and a heartbeat — Tom called it the "puppy pillow" subroutine, after a product used in the Alpha Quadrant to comfort puppies separated from their mothers — but Janry still seemed to prefer organic caregivers.

"You never come down here to visit me," Tom grumbled. He was in charge of sickbay temporarily, covering for the Doctor, who was using his holodeck time. 

"Sorry, Tom, you're not as cute," Harry replied. 

"What are you going to do if we find her relatives?"

"We'll see, very soon," Harry said. His research had borne fruit. "Her parents were assimilated, but she has other family. Her grandparents will be meeting us at Zepfrallon Station, 38 light years ahead."

"Oh. That's good news, right?"

Harry nodded. He'd miss Janry, but _Voyager_ was not the ideal place for a child. It was a decision that entire crew had come to, despite early thoughts of becoming a generation ship. Many of the crew had paired off over the years, but none had had kids. They had no choice with Naomi, but the Borg children would be better off somewhere safer. 

Tom draped an arm around his shoulders. "You know what you need? A dog."

"Where are we going to get a dog out here?"

"Some Delta Quadrant version of a dog," Tom said.

"I don't think the captain would approve of our taking on pets."

"Come on, she loves dogs!"

"And she left hers at home on Earth."

"We'll talk her into it!"

"Good luck with that." 

"We can do it, I tell you..." He noticed Harry's wide grin. "What?"

"I may be losing a baby, but I'll still have you, _Voyager_'s biggest kid."

Tom bridled in mock offense. "Hey, I'll have you know I resemble that remark."

"Yes, yes, you do," Harry said, chuckling. He didn't have a traditional family here in the Delta Quadrant, but he had his _Voyager_ family, and that was enough. 


End file.
